Archive for the ‘GT5’ Category

We’ve been trying to work out an event that would take the bump and grind out of a race and leave pure driving skill/tuning untouched. In an online race, that’s pretty tough because, except for karts, it’s hard to find a car that we haven’t fiddled with. Here’s my suggestion. It’s open for discussion, obviously, but I think it would serve as a platform that could be updated or joined by new members, even if it’s been running for months.

How much do you use the practice section of GT5? Although my racing skills don’t show it, I use it all the time. Once you’ve got top level and all the cars, what’s left to do? Well, I like to practice so I don’t suck quite so bad in the online races.

If you don’t use the practice part, here’s the scoop on it. You choose your car, choose a track, set up the driving options and tuning, decide if you want a single car time trial, a drift trial or a one-make race and then start. There is a running start, same as the bi-weekly seasonal TTs. Once you pass the start finish line, the clock starts and resets after each lap. There is a ghost of your first clean lap and the object is to race around until you get your best time.

Here’s the kicker. If you leave the race to adjust your settings, you start all over again. Your last best lap is now recorded and moves down or stays the same depending on your next lap time. Keep this part in mind. You can’t back out and come in again with the same car or your times start from scratch.

As with the seasonal TTs, hitting a wall or taking a shortcut changes the clock to red and your time isn’t counted. Hit the wall hard enough and your whole next lap is invalidated. Only clean laps count. Keep this in mind too.

Let’s say you have a list of ten cars. Why ten? Because there are only 10 time slots in any of the practice menus. If you were to tune each of those cars to one particular track, race them one by one, you’d have ten best-lap times after you’d raced them all. If you were to take a photo of that screen, once you’re through, and compare it to mine or someone else’s, you’d have a pretty good idea of who could pis…sorry, of who was the better driver at that time on that track in that list of cars.

You could compare each car or total time, it wouldn’t really matter. Total time would be interesting, kind of like the CPU test results that give a computer a such and such rating (FPS for video cards). It would be easy to see which cars that driver handled best, as well.

I’ve been considering this for a few days and this is what I’ve considered.

1. Personally, I like the Tokyo track. First, I like it to test top speed tunes on instead of Sarthe because the long straight is right there after the first turn. Second, it has no shortcuts so I can’t cheat myself by cutting a corner. Third, it has the sweetest long turn in GT5. Fourth, it has the bob-sled section at the end where you could easily smack the right side then the left and turn the clock red. Fifth, it has a small high-speed chicane and finally, it has two very tight corners, a hairpin at the start and a sharp right hander after the long straight. OK, there is a seventh, on the straight there is a jog halfway down that if you don’t take at the right speed means you smack the wall on the left.

2. My car choices would include:

1. a kart

2.an FGT or an F10

3. a Miura

4. a 2J 5. the FT565 Twin Turbo Audi (because I’m Canadian and this car is very fast)

6. a Cotterham Fireblade

7. a GTR but I don’t race them but I know everyone likes them

8. a Shelby (the ’66 not the new one)

9. one of the touring cars, up for grabs

10. maybe the Red Bull (my time in it was 1:06 to give you an indication of how bad I am).

3. The process would be to take each car, tune the crap out of it, get your times down as low as possible, then start the event. Clear the results then run laps with each car in the list until you get your ten best times. The best times would have to be clean laps which eliminates banging the wall and shortcuts (which don’t apply to Tokyo anyway) and, should you back out to tune, you’d have to start all over again. We’d need a time for each car to be able to enter the event.

4. People will mention SRF and the other aids but we’ve got to start somewhere. If you race best with SRF, use it. If you are a purist, don’t. Times are all that matter and there won’t be an asterisk beside any time, no matter what aids were used. No tuning cheats, of course.

5. As time goes by, we would post the lowest total times at the top of the thread. All you’d need is a digital photo of your screen to prove your skill.

I probably missed something here but you folks will be able to pick this apart before the PIC (people in charge) decide. Oh yeah, Tokyo is a very short, fast track. You won’t get old racing ten cars around it. All of the cars I mentioned will do it in about two minutes or less. Even the kart is very close to that time.

In our twice-weekly online racing events, we’ve been testing out different scenarios in an attempt to level the playing field. I guess this is a plain old pissing contest to see who is fastest, no more than that. It presents an interesting dilemma, though. Virtually every car/truck/tank/POS can be tuned in many different ways.

On Saturday, we decided to use the Scion as a test platform and it worked fairly well. We used Deep Forest (I think) for the track and managed times around 1:27 to 1:30. All in all there were no major discrepancies in the times and we were all adjusting the final drive/top speed ratios as the only tune. This is, of course, based on trust but if you ever race with us, I think you’ll see that this isn’t a problem.

We’ve used NASCAR rides for pure fun with lots of crashing and smashing on Daytona but we take our cars to a road track now and then. I have to say that Nurburgring is a favourite for most of us. There is a fair bit of tuning available on these beasts but, again, we try to stick of un-modified cars for the most part. NASCAR is a lot of fun, believe me. Don’t ignore these vehicles or races because they’re American or because the cars looks pretty ugly.

They’re tough to drive well and, if you know the technology behind them, they’re pretty much on the cutting edge of racing technology. Sure, they’re all pushrod engines but everything else is as modern as you can get. The drivers themselves are top athletes, too. Some of these drivers race a few hundred miles on a Saturday then turn around and do the same thing on Sunday. Conditions in the cars during the summer are oppressive, to say the least. Don’t assume that they ‘just turn left’ all the time.

Somehow we always move to some go-kart racing. In GT5, go-karts are the ultimate ‘no tune’ test subject. Adjust the top speed and you’re off! We usually end up on the Eiger tracks, regular or reverse, and you’d think it was the Indy 500 from the sounds of the drivers hooting and hollering as they vie for first. The races are short, extremely intense and always a laugh.

Finally, and this is the main point of this post, we have used the Cotterham Fireblade every now and then. If you don’t have a Fireblade, pick one up and see what you think. Read the description and tune it however you want. I’ve taken one of mine up to around 250 hp, added everything that can be added and, guess what, it is a real terror to drive. Next to the karts, the Fireblade is the lightest drive in your garage. Adding a ton of power to that chassis is just asking for trouble.

The reason I tricked out one of my Fireblades was simply to see how I could tune it to get it to handle better. Top speed is around 150 or so but getting there on Sarthe was a trial until I did one simple thing. Every corner, every step on the gas made the car feel like it was on glare ice.

What did I do to make it handle better? If you’re online for the Wednesday or Saturday session, I’ll let you know what adjustment I made. Pump up the HP and fiddle with a few things, one in particular. (Clue: it had nothing to do with camber, caster, suspension or LSD). See you Wednesday! (Times and room numbers are posted in the forum and on the Facebook page.)

We’re excited to announce the launch of a great new competition with a chance to win some great prizes! Just play the TimeTrials in GT5 and you can win!For more information or to join up and win, click here:GT5 TimeTrials Competition

I didn’t bother reporting it on here simply because I thought it would be only temporary but its looks to be staying for longer than expected.

The Sony Playstation network has been shut down indefinitely following an attack on the system. Not only is this a massive inconvenience for all gamers it also proposes a level of security risk. This comes straight from the horses mouth:

For your security, we encourage you to be especially aware of email, telephone, and postal mail scams that ask for personal or sensitive information. Sony will not contact you in any way, including by email, asking for your credit card number, social security number or other personally identifiable information. If you are asked for this information, you can be confident Sony is not the entity asking. When the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services are fully restored, we strongly recommend that you log on and change your password. Additionally, if you use your PlayStation Network or Qriocity user name or password for other unrelated services or accounts, we strongly recommend that you change them, as well.

To protect against possible identity theft or other financial loss, we encourage you to remain vigilant, to review your account statements and to monitor your credit reports. We are providing the following information for those who wish to consider it:

Check your credit cards and don’t respond to suspicious emails. Most gamers I believe are well adapted to the online world and can figure out a scammy and potentially dangerous email from a mile away, but be more careful than ever.

Only a week ago or so, the latest GT5 update was released. In a surprise move an update for the update (or so you can call it) has been released. Official notes can be found below:

[Major Changes and New Features]
-Friend Rankings
In Drift Trials and Time Trials, you can now display leaderboards that shows only your friends. While it was difficult before to locate your friends in the general leaderboards, this now makes it easier to compare laptimes with them, allowing you to compete just between your friends for the best laps and scores.

[Correction of Known Issues]
– The calculation of performance points (PP) which is an index of a car’s performance, is now calculated without taking into account the tyre selection.You can now combine the performance point restriction and the tyre restriction when setting the regulations for a lounge.
– Fixed the issue where the performance of electric cars increased/decreased after a certain amount of driving.
– Downloaded replays from Seasonal Event Rankings can now be viewed properly.

[Other Changes]
– Cars worth over 1,000,000 Cr. (Including those in a gift car ticket form) are now prohibited from being traded to prevent issues during the trading process. When lending and borrowing cars between friends, please utilize the car loan system